Ana Llorens

The analysis of the structural repercussions of musicians’ strategies has traditionally focused on their handling of timing and dynamics, not only because of the correlation found in performances between hierarchical phrase structure and coordinated decreases in both parameters —usually referred to as phrase arching (Gabrielsson 1988) or phrase-final lengthening (Todd 1985; Repp 1990)— but also because of these parameters’ easier quantification. However, other parameters, including articulation, can play equally significant roles in the emergence and potential perception of musical structures. The processes of performance and inference are, moreover, so unique to each musician and/or beholder that revisions of traditional approaches to musical form have become necessary. To explore this phenomenon, I study both the score and five recordings of the finale from Brahms’s first cello sonata, op. 38. The junctures where the transition and the recapitulation start are indeterminate. In addition, the piece employs procedures typical of both the sonata and the fugue to produce a formal hybrid that poses significant quandaries to both performers and analysts. Focusing on the selected musicians’ manipulations of articulation, this article aims to determine whether this parameter might, along with timing and dynamics, be relevant in the emergence and perception of formal relations. The study also addresses the ways in which formal ambiguity can be materialized, concealed, and created in performance, ultimately investigating how musical form can, on the basis of its performance, be considered as multivalent.

Many musicians performing an ensemble work would aim to achieve good, if not perfect, synchronisation of timing for the sake of an effective rendition (McCaleb, 2014). In this respect, Pau Casals and Mieczyslaw Horszowski’s 1935 recording of the second movement of Johannes Brahms’s F major Cello Sonata, Op. 99, is certainly intriguing, as asynchronies between the two instruments are clearly perceptible throughout extensive passages. Questions concerning the rationale behind these temporal discrepancies arise: To what extent did Casals and Horszowski intend not to play together? In what ways can we understand these asynchronies? What are their musical effects? Analysis of timing that focused on the magnitude of the asynchronies as well as on tempo curves and durational patterns employed by the performers in this recording has shed light on the effects, purpose, and meaning of those asynchronies. This article illustrates that the temporal discrepancies between the cello and piano parts are neither the result of chance nor only local expressive devices; rather, they are critical elements in a highly distinctive construction of the Adagio Affettuoso from Brahms’s Op. 99. They attest to an ongoing structural dialogue between the musicians that shapes and paces the piece in unexpected ways, prompting a reconsideration of ensemble playing as affording different, even conflicting attitudes. Furthermore, their potentially structural import leads to a critical broadening of the methods and parameters that music analysis has traditionally acknowledged. On these bases, a fruitful dialogue between music analysis and performance is put forward.

Literature on the impact of performers’ manipulations of sound on the projection and inference of structural relations in music has tended to focus on phrase arching techniques, whereby musicians reportedly signal phrase boundaries through coordinated decreases in tempo and dynamics (Todd 1983). As some scholars have recently noted, this and related theories can be adequately applied to performances under the influence of structuralist views on musical form only (Cook 2009, Fabian 2014). Early recordings offer, on the contrary, invaluable insights into pre-structuralist, approaches to musical form, as materialised in performance. Through the analysis of select renditions of the first movements of Brahms’s cello sonatas–by Emmanuel Feuermann and Theo van der Pas (1934) and Pau Casals and Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1936)–this chapter examines how timbre, intonation, and microtiming can also play a role in the creation, projection, and inference of structural relations. Taking the conclusions further, it ultimately exemplifies how the use of early recordings in contemporary research can contribute to general music theory by prompting a reconceptualisation of musical form as eminently constructed, diachronically contingent, and sound dependent, and of chamber music as unbalanced, potentially asynchronous practice.